1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and method, and a program. In particular, the invention relates to an image processing apparatus and method, and a program with which an image identification performance can be easily improved.
2. Description of the Related Art
Up to now, various technologies for identifying whether face images are of the same person or not have been proposed.
The applicant of the present invention invented an image processing apparatus for improving a recognition accuracy in a case where a recognition processing is performed by using a correlation between two feature amounts, and has already filed the patent application as Japanese Patent Application JP 2006-332302 (hereinafter, which will be referred to as previous application).
According to the previous application, the accuracy of the recognition processing can be improved, but it is possible to identify faces at a high accuracy facing only in a front direction or a particular direction. This is because when the direction of the face is changed, an image pattern of a facial feature is significantly changed, and a similarity between the facial features of the same person is likely to be lost.
In addition, a method of identifying a face facing in an arbitrary direction has been proposed, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-322577.
According to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-322577, by using a standard face 3D model of a human face, a face facing in an arbitrary direction is identified. According to this method, two face images captured in different directions are compared with each other, and one of the face images is affixed to a face 3D model. Then, a face image equivalent to the same direction as the other of the face images is synthesized to realize the face identification in the different directions.
In addition, a thesis disclosed by in Volker Blanz, et al, “Face Recognition Based on Fitting a 3D Morphable Model”, has proposed a method of performing a face identification by using a parameter most approximate to an input face image from a face image synthesized by morphing a standard 3D face deformation model on the basis of various parameters.